Views and news about the brews. Unique and relevant information for coffee professionals and enthusiasts.

Hey everyone! Welcome to the new-look Barista Hustle! 😎

This newsletter portion of Barista Hustle will now be hosted here on Revue. It’s much easier to access and share what was formerly trapped in your inboxes. There’ll also be 1,000% more emoji. Duh.

All my past and future long-form posts will still be at BaristaHustle.com. I won’t be publishing one of these *every* week as I did last year, as I’m now busy developing products and different styles of content for you.

You can still reply directly to this email with any questions, feedback, ideas, links or just delightful hellos.

This week we also bid a fond farewell to Alex Bernson, who has been editing and contributing to BH from the very early days. He’s joining WCE as their Marketing Manager! A big congrats and goodbye, it’s been super fun.

That something is putting really delicious coffee in Nespresso pods. You can sign up for updates as they happen (highly recommended).

I’m sure you have an opinion about pods, but nobody cares. The only thing that matters about this project is how well it’s received by regular consumers and how many people it introduces to -and convinces of- the deliciousness of specialty.

Here’s why I think it’ll work:

Nespresso machines are incredibly accurate and consistent.

Maxwell and co. don’t tend to do things that aren’t excellent.

The barrier to entry is so much lower than other ‘specialty’ brewing methods we’ve been touting: millions upon millions of people already have the right equipment.

No doubt Colonna will have something to say about the water their customers should use in their machines. If they do, their roasting will be dialled to that water, almost guaranteeing a beverage that tastes as it was intended.

Q If you sell coffee, how often can you guarantee that home brewers are tasting your coffee as it was intended?A Less than Colonna will.

Barista Hustle Debate Club

I’m really interested in hosting a series of debates about the pressing issues in coffee. So many voices, so little organised conversation.

2 teams of three. ~3-5 minutes each speaker. Speak and rebuttal cycles of ~24hrs (to ease the international timezoney nature of these things). I’ll organise the debate behind the scenes and post it as one video at the end.

A tumblr that rates Melbourne cafes on, well, douchey barista dudeness. I’m not saying this is the best way to tackle the various gender divides and attitude problems in our industry, but it’s something.